


Making me stay Another Time

by musicalgirl4474



Series: Psychology terms are Great Batfamily Prompts [9]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Bad Parent, Cats, F/M, Injured Dick Grayson, M/M, Major Character Injury, Protective Damian Wayne, mama cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 14:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17962619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicalgirl4474/pseuds/musicalgirl4474
Summary: Normative Social Influence- Conforming to avoid rejection and/or gain social standing.Dick gets injured. Damian is NOT happy about it.“Did you know that Dick was injured?”“I was aware of it. He claimed he could handle it.”





	Making me stay Another Time

Grayson needed to have father’s approval. Or, rather, he felt the need to have father’s approval, which was absurd. Grayson had proven himself on the streets of Gotham to the criminal element and, though Damian did not admit it outloud, to his Robin. And he was Grayson’s Robin. He was not afraid of losing his father, that had already happened. He was afraid of losing Grayson. To his father.

For a time, his father had allowed Grayson to continue as Batman, despite the younger man’s protests. Protests that Damian’s father was Batman and he, Richard, was Nightwing. But he had acquiesced quickly. In fact, Damian liked to think that it had only been a token argument. That Grayson did not want to leave him. Damian hoped that Grayson and he could be partners forever, because they were the best, they were perfect. Batman and Robin. His Batman, Grayson’s Robin. They belonged to each other. 

But when his father once again took the cowl and asked Grayson to continue to be Batman for a time as well to confuse the criminal element, it was Grayson who took the orders and Damian’s father who gave them. It was father who had began sending Grayson on more and more solo missions, and Damian watched as Grayson’s skin began to pale and his bright expressive eyes became perpetually tired. Damian asked Grayson to be allowed to go with him on the next mission, but the man merely shot him a tired smile and said, “Go ask your father.”

By the time the shouting had died down and Damian had went back to find Grayson and ask him to take him with despite his father’s thoughts, his brother was already gone. Grayson didn’t return that night, or the night after. When Damian asked his father where Richard was and when he would be returning, he received only a grunt as his father shook out the newspaper. Richard never read the newspaper at the breakfast table. Not when there was anyone else in the room, at least. Damian had never known how much less of a presence a person was when they hid behind overlarge squares of paper and ink. That afternoon, just as Damian was deciding that permission or no he would be going out to look for Grayson that night, the phone rang. It wasn’t much longer for his father to begin shouting, something about someone ‘not being one to talk about family’. Must be Todd on the other end. Curiosity piqued, Damian slipped from his room and into the kitchen, padding on silent feet through the clean halls of the manor so that he could pick up the phone and listen in to the conversation. This was one of the only security failings within the manor, and something that Todd had told him about. Since the manor’s phone system worked off of a landline rather than a wireless connection, you could listen in to a conversation happening on another phone in the manor.

“None of your business Jason!”

“Damn you! Of course it’s my goddamn business if-” Then Todd was cut off from his end as someone else took the receiver. Damian wondered what had made Todd so angry. Knowing him, it could be anything from a not-as-dead-as-he-would-have-liked criminal, to an injured comrade. Damian carefully avoided using his name.

“You really should know better Bruce,” came the new voice, one that Damian thought was familiar, but he couldn’t place it, which annoyed him slightly.

“Selina.” Damian scowled on his end. Of course. The cat. Grayson had spoken of her a few times as a kind of surrogate mother to himself and Todd, but Damian could never understand it. He knew that he had a prejudiced view because of his parentage, but he did not like that harlot one bit. She was nothing but a thief, she had no skills to rival his mother's. But . . . Grayson trusted her, sometimes even seemed to respect her. So Damian trusted her. To an extent. 

“Did you know that Dick was injured?” 

“I was aware of it. He claimed he could handle it.”

“And you sent him on an even more dangerous mission. You are aware of how stubborn your boys are, correct?”

His father made a noncommittal grunting noise. Kyle sighed, sounding exasperated. “I called Jason to come by my place three hours ago. That was about two hours after one Dick Grayson climbed through my window covered in blood from a reopened gunshot wound among other injuries. He had a concussion and he was having difficulty staying awake. By difficulty, I mean I had to give him mild electrical shocks to keep him awake. Jason and I barely got him to stop bleeding everywhere before nothing was able to keep him awake. The suit was in his bag. Why the Hell are you still making him wear that thing, Bruce? Do you realize the target it paints on your boy when he’s out there alone? You don’t even let Damian out with him.” Damian’s mother had sometimes gotten like this, attacking a victim with information and disappointment in rapid-fire succession without ever giving the unfortunate soul a moment to get a word in. “He fell asleep before we were able to stabilize him, but we don’t think he’s in a coma, considering he keeps calling for you and Damian in his sleep.”

“He’s stable? That’s it then. I’ll ask him for a full report when-”

“Don’t you fucking dare you emotionless bastard,” hissed Kyle. “You are packing up whatever worthless thing you’re doing, grabbing that cute little son of yours, and getting your ass over here this instant.” Damian expected his father to fight back, but he simply hung up. Damian was a little surprised by this, and so didn’t quite manage to avoid Kyle’s next words.

“Dick needs you Damian.” Of course the sneak had known he was on the other end as well. Then his father was at the doorway, hands on his hips, all but glaring at Damian.

“You can’t blame me,” Damian said, petulantly, he knew, but he was justified. “You have given me none of the information I requested regarding Grayson, and I thought that perhaps you might very well tell Todd if there was something badly amiss.” Since you obviously don’t trust me, he left unsaid as he hung up the phone. His father continued to glare at him for a while before he sighed. “Come along, Damian.”

Pennyworth already has the car idling in the drive, and Damian suspected that Todd and the butler had talked before the call was transferred to his father’s office. The drive was quiet, tense, as most interactions between Damian and his father had been recently if there wasn’t shouting involved.

The apartment that they stopped at was in the nicer part of town, a red-brick building several stories high. Kyle opened the front door for them as they walked up, hands on her hips as she leaned against the door frame. “You two will be quiet,” she hissed, and if she had a tail, it would have been lashing. Then she turned and lead them up, up, up the flights of stairs to the penthouse at the top. She opened the door quietly, nudging a cat aside gently with one foot as it stuck its nose out the door.

The penthouse was a large, mostly open space with a living room and kitchen visible from the door, and three doors, likely bedrooms and a bathroom. The door to one of the bedrooms was open. Damian looked around as he entered. It was generic enough, cream colored wall and dresser that had a few medical instruments tossed haphazardly on top. Probably the guest bedroom. But it was occupied at the moment by way too many people and cats. Kyle shooed the long-haired black cat and short-haired tortoiseshell out of the room, gently setting them down outside. And then Damian had to look at the bed, because everyone else was. Grayson was pale. Very pale, and there was sweat on his brow and dark circles under his eyes. The blanket was pulled all the way up to his chin, and bandages wrapped around his forehead, so that his black hair stuck up all over the place. Damian felt his lips compress as he did his best to keep his emotions inside. He wasn’t even entirely sure what he felt; anger at father, at Grayson? Fear? Or perhaps annoyance that it was Todd and Drake that sat in the chairs at Grayson’s side. Determined to be close to his mentor in the older man’s time of need, Damian climbed carefully onto the foot of the bed, sitting at Grayson’s feet, gazing at his slack, tired, pained face.

“Dami? Bruce? Bruce! Help!” Grayson thrashed a little before calming as Todd and Drake stroked his face and hair in placating gestures. 

“I think he may have been dosed with a mild form of scarecrow’s fear toxin,” Drake said, looking towards Damian’s father. “There’s no trace of it in his system though, at least, not that I could find, so if he was, it wasn’t too dangerous.”

His father took in the information with a nod and turned on his heel, stalking out of the room in that mood that Damian had seen when Grayson had lectured him on something regarding his treatment of Damian. The Kyle woman sighed and followed him, leaving the four brothers alone. The peacekeeper among them unconscious on the bed. It was quiet for a while, in between Grayson’s fits of yelling out names, Todd’s and Drake’s and fathers and his own. Once or twice he called for the Gordon woman.

“Well, not that the silence isn’t refreshing,” Todd said eventually, still stroking Grayson’s face absently, something that made Damian’s blood boil possessively. “But it’s kind of fucking awkward. You both have questions. Ask them.”

“Where did Bruce send Dick that ended with him like this?” Was Drake’s question, but Damian spoke up quickly.

“What is it that happened to Grayson? And why?”

“You recall the Arkham breakout last week?” both younger males nodded. “Joker, Scarecrow, and Ivy were never apprehended, and Croc’s been laying low the last few months. I got intel from one of my sources that those four were getting together with Black Mask two nights ago to broker some kind of deal. Whether it was a full-blown partnership or not, I’m not sure, but I’d bet my last cigarette that it was.”

Damian tutted. “Horrible habit,” he said. Todd glared at him before continuing.

“Dickhead told me recently that I couldn’t handle everything on my own, and since he was stitching up my side at the time, I was inclined to agree to contact someone next time something too big for one person came to my attention. Bruce may think that I’m a horrible person, but I keep my word if I can.”

“So you gave Bruce the intel, and he sent Dick,” Drake said, narrowing his eyes.Todd made an angry, disgusted sound.

“Just Dick. I thought that at least the Demon Brat would be on it as well-”

“I am sitting right in front of you, Todd.”

“-but apparently Bruce doesn’t think that his soldiers need backup.” The bitterness in Todd’s voice was hard to miss, and Damian thought briefly of the epitaph in the cave. ‘A Good Soldier’. Abruptly, Damian noticed that he was clenching his hands into fists, and made an effort to relax them. But was that all that Grayson and Todd and Drake and . . . himself . . . were to his father?

“Why wouldn’t Dick call for backup? He had to have known he’d need it,” Drake said, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers together.

“And here’s the thing that you two don’t know about Dickiebird,” Todd said, with a smile that was more grimace than anything else. “He is well aware of Bruce’s faults, in fact, it’s possible that he knows them better than anyone else alive. But of the four of us, he’s also the only one who had a good, relatively normal family life before Bruce. He needs that close, parental relationship, something that Bruce has given . . . well . . . I’m not going to lie about this, he hasn’t given it to anyone, not even his golden boy. So Dick does everything he can to get Bruce’s approval. It’s easier to get his approval than his love, trust me. But he needs love; Dick craves it. It’s why he’s so set on getting us to be an actual family. He’d give anything, anything, so that this family could be a family.”

“He has to know that that will never happen,” Drake said.

Todd snorted. “Don’t short change his ability,” he said darkly. “The three of us are having a civil conversation in the same room, and Bruce is in the same building.”

“So Grayson got hurt on purpose?”

“Nah,” came a tired voice from the head of the bed, and Damian snapped his gaze to his mentor’s face. “I came here on purpose, ‘cause Selina would call Jason. Also, ‘cause her place was closest.” Then- “Is there any painkiller? My arm hurts like a bitch.”

“You’re already high on the stuff,” Todd said, shaking his head. “You should have called for backup, idiot.”

“Meh. Maybe next time I’ll be able to. Also, it’d help if you were actually easy to get ahold of and stuff . . .” Grayson trailed off as his eyes closed. Damian just raised an eyebrow at Todd, who shrugged.

“He’s doped up. Everyone acts weird when they’re doped up on painkillers.”


End file.
